The muttering that had been continuous during his speaking now broke into shouts. Tangled quelled it with a raising of his staff. ‘Is that why you betrayed us?’
‘I returned to an older loyalty, that is all. I despised myself that I did not die like a warrior when you captured me, because I was so young and weak. I lied to myself for the many summers since. But then I saw the strength of the people I was born to, while the Deer people grew weaker. I wanted to be strong like them again.’
Once more, Tangled quieted the crowd. ‘And now?’
‘Now I wish to die like a warrior as I should have before. I wish to sing my death song so you will all see that my people have courage beyond your courage, strength beyond your strength. That is my wish.’
‘And you will have it.’ Tangled lifted his staff and pointed to the east, where the sky was lightening. ‘The God of War is coming to us in fire and we will send him your soul to greet him. If we had time we should prepare you for many days, so you and he would both have much honour. But by his swift coming and your life flowing in red upon the ground I do not think we have that time.’ He turned now to his people, to the warriors who had gathered at the front. ‘Release his soul.’
The people spread back but not far, creating a space of about fifty paces in length, thirty wide. The drums that had beat during the fight started up again now, and the crowd began to chant ‘Heh-Heh-Heh-Heh-Heh’. The torches were brought in, placed around at intervals, though the growing light was rendering them unnecessary. Yet their fire was needed for a different purpose now.
Sada came to Tagay, handed him a smouldering stick, took him to the end of the two lines that had formed, facing each other, twenty warriors in each. Black Snake was stripped of his armour and, naked, his blood spreading in a red web over the blue tattooed body, he was dragged to the entrance of the lines, forced to stand.
‘Do as I do,’ whispered Sada. Then he stepped up to Black Snake and said, ‘You look cold, Tawane. Let me warm you.’ And he thrust his flaming, sharpened stick into the blue tattooed ear.
Black Snake did not scream. He roared, ‘I am Tawane of the Nundawaono. Hear my death song!’ and he began to stagger down the lines.
Tagay thrust, at the same time as the man facing him on the other side of the line. Their brands were pushed into flesh, but Black Snake did not turn, or acknowledge the pain in any way. He limped down the gauntlet, receiving the fire and jabs, singing his song through clenched teeth. He fell twice, forced himself up, dragging his useless leg behind him and on.
Somehow he reached the end of the line. When the last stake had been pushed home with a cry of, ‘You bleed. Let me stop the flow!’ he was thrown down, his hands stretched out to logs on either side, other logs brought crashing down on them with full weight crushing his fingers. He screamed then, but just his name, and fainted. Water was thrown over him, and he sat up. Immediately, he began to sing again.
‘The Black Snake steals across the ground, enemies run or fall into his jaws.’
They crushed his feet then, as his hands had been. Revived once more, he was tied swiftly to a stake, new thrust into the earth, his face toward the growing light.
Drumbeats, chanting, smoke, burned flesh, blood. Every sense stretched with the taste of death, the scent of it, touching mortality, breathing the beyond, glimpses of hell. Tagay let Sada lead him, did as Sada did – stabbed, scorched, crushed. Flames ran up limbs, a snake curled round an eye socket, now empty and oozing. Nothing outside the flaming circle, only the flesh before him, strapped to a stake.
The writhing body went limp, dangled from its bonds. Sada stepped in, put a hand to the wreckage of a chest, an ear to what had once been a mouth. The drums dropped to a mere caress of hand on skin, the chanting to a whisper.
‘He is close,’ Sada announced. ‘He seeks the Sun God.’
‘And see where Ondoutaehte comes for him. See!’ Tangled raised his staff again, pointed to the east. All the people turned, just as the ball of flames that was the sun, the Sun God, burst from the forests, a ball spun up by some huge hand.
They greeted it with a cry. ‘Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!’
Sada placed a bone knife into Tagay’s hand. ‘The head and then the heart,’ he whispered and walked away.
He was still moving in the blur of his senses. As he stepped up to the stake, his approach somehow made the mass of broken bone and lacerated skin raise his head. Sounds came from somewhere in his throat. Sounds that could have been ‘Tawane of the Nundawaono.’
‘And I am Tagaynearguye, and my people are the Tahontaenrat.’
He raised the knife.
He had never scalped anyone before. But he discovered he knew how.
He had never cut out someone’s heart. But he found he knew that too.
Turning to his tribe, he lifted each bloodied, full hand. ‘Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!’ he shouted into the sunrise.
‘Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!’ his people shouted back.
Then he looked down. Straight into the horror-filled eyes of Anne Rombaud.
EIGHT
ANDAC-WANDA
He sat exactly where he’d sat only the night before. Once more, his father’s war club was before him, though it was frayed and battered now. Once more, embers burned tobacco for his Gods, for his Oki, the bright, striped stone given to him by his uncle in another time, another world. He looked out on this one now, which he had become part of again, and marvelled. The slanting rays of a setting sun had turned the river to a cascade of polished gems. Seeing that sparkle, a memory came, of a young child in France when Jaques Cartier, the great Captain, had returned from his last failed attempt to set up a colony here, in this place he called Stadacona. He had brought thousands of what he thought were diamonds back, to be his fortune. They had proved brittle, worthless pebbles and Tagay recalled how he and his fellow hostages were mocked with the phrase, ‘as false as a diamond in Canada’.
Tagay looked out now, to the waters of the surging river, to the huge forests lit by the setting sun, and knew that Cartier had left the true diamonds behind.
But how long will we keep them?’ he thought, as a shadow ran the width of the river with a cloud passing before the sun. From the banks to his left, two more canoes were pushed into the water, and twelve warriors began to move rapidly toward the canoes that floated ten boat lengths offshore. But the Tattooed warriors only let them get so close before they paddled swiftly ahead of them. When the Tahontaenrat gave up the chase, the enemy craft returned to take up the same position, to resume their observations. The game had been going on all day and both sides seemed to be enjoying it. But Tagay knew it was no game. The People of the Great Hill were seeing that their quarry remained trapped where they were.
Another shadow fell on him and he thought it was the sun hiding again because he had not been aware of any footfalls on the pebbles of the beach. So he was startled by the voice.
‘Is your arm broken?’
He squinted up. Anne stood with her back to the sun, a silhouette, her long, black hair etched in flame. The beauty of it caught him, just as the diamonds on the water had.
‘No, it is hurt but …’ He rose as he spoke, looking down at the leaves wrapped tight around his forearm by Sada, soaked in some distillation of herb that cooled the bruised flesh. So it was only when he was standing and had shaded his eyes from the sunlight that he saw her face.
She wore the same look he had seen on it at dawn as he stood with a man’s heart in one hand and his scalp in the other.
He felt a blow, like a war club falling, but inside him, in his chest. He reached his good arm toward her. ‘White Cedar …’
‘Don’t!’ She pulled her hand back, held it up, awkwardly high. ‘Do not touch me.’
‘What is wrong?’
‘Your hands.’ Her eyes left him, stared into a memory. ‘What they did to him!’
He felt a stirring, first of anger, then something else as well, a need to explain. ‘My hands helped him to die.’
br /> ‘They tortured him till he died.’
‘Helped him to die as he chose.’
‘He had no choice!’ The eyes were back on him now, hard as the voice.
‘He did!’ His voice matched hers. ‘He could have stayed on the ground, I could have cut his throat like a beaver in a snare. What honour would there have been for him in that? What stories to tell in the next world? You saw him, how he hardly cried out, how he sang his death song to the end.’ He stepped closer. ‘It is the same as your father.’
‘My … father?’
The look she gave him made him wince but he pressed on. ‘You told me how his enemies chained him to a wall, broke his body. He chose that. It is the same.’
‘No!’ As she thought of Jean Rombaud, tears came, ran down her face. ‘My father was keeping faith with his queen, with the oath he had sworn. They tortured him to get information.’
‘Then that is their cruelty, Anne. We do not do that for … information.’ He spat the last word. ‘We helped a man prove his courage. As the men who killed your father helped him. I saw Jean Rombaud before, in Paris, in St Malo, how afraid he was! A proud man, afraid. It hurt him, here.’ He touched his chest. ‘You know this, Anne.’
‘He had suffered much …’
‘Yes!’ He leaned forward, eagerly. ‘But I saw him at the end. He was no longer afraid. He chose to die. Like a warrior.’
‘It is different,’ she said, fiercely. ‘How can you say it is the same? My father fell to a dozen swords, in battle. Even though I hated Black Snake, hated him above all men …’ She faltered. ‘Jesus save me, what you did to his eyes!’
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Your Sun God. Your Son of God. He chose this death too. I heard the tales. Whipped, nailed to a stake, stabbed. Singing his song, so he could live for ever with his father in the heavens. So all his people could live. Jesus. Your father. Black Snake. This is how warriors choose to die.’
‘So you would have me watch you die that way?’
‘No. But if I do, know that I die as I choose. Like a warrior of my people.’
He reached out once more to her. She moved back immediately, taking several steps down the beach. In a new voice, flat, uninflected, she spoke and she did not look at him. ‘Your aunt is dying. Will you come?’
He knew only that Gaka had been taken sick, no more. ‘Yes. I will come now.’
‘Let me go ahead and prepare her.’ She began to move away up the beach.
‘Anne!’ He came after her. ‘Wait.’
Her hand halted him. ‘Don’t,’ was all she said before she walked rapidly around the boulders and disappeared.
He turned back to the water, but the light on it gave him no pleasure now. There was a wall between him and Anne and every day, it seemed, one of them added another stone to it.
Whatever I do, I must make sure she is safe. So when the ‘Sea Feather’ returns, Jacquet can take her back to France.
The thought made him suddenly, deeply sad. Then he heard feet crunching on the beach pebbles again.
She has come back, he thought joyfully. Speak to her the words you need to say.
Sada came limping down the beach. ‘What is wrong, Tagay? You do not look like the man who has eaten the heart of his enemy.’
‘There is something I need to do.’
He made to push past but a hand on his chest halted him. ‘There is. You are summoned to the council.’
Tagay looked at his cousin in surprise. ‘The council? But I thought it was just for the chiefs and elders.’
Sada grunted. ‘It is, in normal times. But these are not normal times as you can see.’ He pointed over Tagay’s shoulders to the water, where the enemies’ canoes had circled back again. ‘Besides, Little Bear, as war chief of your clan you should be there.’
‘What are you saying, Sada? The sun has boiled your head. I am not a war chief.’
‘And who holds that office for the Bear clan?’
Tagay thought. ‘He was killed, wasn’t he, defending one of the burned villages? And his successor will be named tomorrow, at the feast of the full moon.’ Tagay smiled. ‘You are his successor, Sada.’
‘You are right and you are wrong and you are right and you are wrong. I can see why you would be confused.’ Sada lowered himself onto the ground. ‘I must sit, because my leg, which I twisted helping you win a race, still hurts. Ah!’ He began to rub at his ankle. ‘And that is one of the reasons you are right and wrong. I should be war chief. But when one is appointed, it is customary that he should go immediately to war. The war waits,’ he pointed again to the water and the circling canoes, ‘but this prevents me going to it. The Bear clan gathered after the death this morning, while you slept. It is decided. You will go in my place.’
Tagay fell down beside his cousin. ‘You are mad. All of you. There are many far worthier than me. I am not even trained in the Tahontaenrat way of war.’
‘No. But you are favoured by the Gods. And that is better than any skill.’ Sada reached across, placing a hand on Tagay’s shoulder. ‘You won the judgement of the Twin Gods and killed your enemy. You carry Donnaconna’s Oki. Your father was a war chief of great skill as was your uncle, Tangled. Above all, Tagay, the dream tellers of our people have long spoken of the Hunter of the Sunrise who would return when we had great need of him. You are that Hunter.’
Sada had brought a large deerskin bag with him. Now he reached into it.
‘This is the wampum belt of our clan war chief.’ He stretched the lengths of beaded cords out toward Tagay.
‘Sada, this is madness.’
Without replying, Sada draped the beads over his neck. ‘Now, you are to be called by his name in council, which has been passed down from chief to chief since the deer first came from the forest. That name is Tonessah. It means ‘One Who Guards’. This,’ he said, pulling a long piece of carved wood from the bag, ‘is our pipe.’
He handed it over, despite Tagay’s protestations.
‘And this is “The Arrow That Flies True”. It is the first one you shoot into the ranks of our enemies.’
‘Sada.’ Tagay tried to speak.
His cousin was rising to his feet. ‘There will be ceremony later, but now there is no time. You must go to the council. They have deliberated long and still have found no answer.’
Tagay looked at the pipe in one hand, the arrow in the other, at the beads hanging from his neck. ‘What will I say there?’
‘Maybe nothing. Maybe you will just be silent. But maybe the Gods, who love you, will speak to you, here!’ Sada tapped him on the chest. ‘Listen for their words.’
And with that, the limping warrior led his war chief from the beach and through the village to Tangled’s lodge, where the council sat.
‘Your nephew sends word,’ Anne said. ‘He has been summoned to the council. But he will come soon.’
She looked again, in the faint hope that her words would cause a reaction. But the right eye that gazed up from behind its half-closed lid was still static, while the left one remained where it had settled after her attack above the cliffs – rolled over and down, as if seeking something on the tip of her nose.
Anne touched the left hand, curled into a claw above the beaver skin. It was cold, despite the warmth of the lodge, the fire heavily banked only a few paces away.
‘Gaka. Aunt.’ She squeezed the hand, which stayed lifeless to her touch. It felt like the hands of the dying always did, barely clinging to this side of the veil. She thought of Guiseppe Toldo, the old carpenter whom she had helped on this journey, that other lifetime, in Siena. Then, her hand had been support, to ease his passage through from this plane to the next. But here, her hand was trying to pull Gaka back.
‘What will I do without you, Aunt?’
She pressed the old woman’s hand into her own forehead, began to murmur, words in a mixture of their languages, seeking to be understood yet to understand herself also, speaking of her fear. And of Tagay, of the dreams she’d had of him. Dreams co
llapsed in blood now, in a heart pulled beating from a dying man’s chest.
She thought it was her, the agitation she felt spreading through their joined limbs. But then she felt the hand in hers contract, heard a rattle in the throat of the woman she held, a sound she had heard so many times before.
‘No, Gaka, no, don’t leave me,’ she cried out.
Then she heard the whisper.
‘I have had a dream.’
‘Gaka!’ Anne bent, saw light in the one eye that looked straight out at her.
‘Do not fear, child,’ Gaka whispered. ‘I have been to the house of my ancestors. A feast waits for me there in the Village of the Dead. Such a feast. But they told me it was not quite ready, that I must have patience, go back and wait a little longer. That there was something I had to do first, here. A gift I had to bring them.’
She coughed and Anne ran to get some water. The old woman spluttered, some of the liquid running down her chin.
‘Rest, Aunt, rest,’ Anne said gently.
‘Rest? No, child, if I wanted rest I would have stayed at the feast my ancestors are preparing for me.’ She tried to raise her head, but sank back with a sigh. ‘Is your little shadow, Do-ne, here?’
The boy rarely left Anne’s side. Now, on hearing his name, he came up to his great-aunt’s bed, staring with undisguised interest at Gaka’s rolled over eye.
‘Do-ne,’ Gaka said fondly. ‘You must do something for me and for White Cedar. You must go to the council. You must take a message to my brother, Tangled. Tell him’ – and here she reached out and took Anne’s hand with her good one – ‘tell him I have had a dream. And tell him that I request andac-wanda.’
The boy’s eyes widened and he looked between the two women. ‘But, Aunt …’
‘Go, little one. Tell them.’
He looked as if he would speak again. But then he turned and limped from the lodgehouse.